Clara and Mr. Tiffany

by Susan Vreeland

  I assumed that was meant as a defense of his activities. He began to brood, preoccupied with Bowery Street, I suppose. The starkness of his vacancy unsettled me. I didn’t challenge it with words, though I did try to engage him with my eyes. It took the blast of cold air and the snow coming down thick and fast as we stepped out of the train to bring him back to the here and now.

  We took a horsecab in the gathering darkness, and he insisted on carrying me from the road to George’s studio despite my protests that I had on my rubber overshoes. Nevertheless, his gallantry made me feel cherished. Inside, George gave us a merry welcome, declaring that I looked angelic with snow on my hat and eyelashes, and drew us close to a crackling fire. He showed us the paintings and sketches he had completed, and the cartoon of his mosaic entry for the prize of a three-year residency at the American Academy in Rome.

  “We were to have depicted the theme of The Triumph of Commerce,” he said. “Dudley entered too.”

  “Ominous title for a piece of art when art and commerce are often at odds,” I remarked.

  He served us ham sandwiches, coleslaw, pickles, and hot tea. After half a sandwich, Edwin said he wasn’t feeling well. Wind blew snow pellets against the window in a chilling spray.

  “You do what you want,” Edwin said. “I’m taking the next train back.” He held his handkerchief up to his mouth and ducked out the door.

  “Edwin!” George called, and went after him. “Edwin, come back!”

  In a few minutes George returned. “He’s gone. He must have run.”

  We stared at each other, dumbfounded.

  “If he was afraid we would get snowed in, why didn’t he insist that we both come with him?” I asked.

  George raised his shoulders. “He should have. Maybe he really was sick.”

  Edwin’s bizarre behavior bothered me, but George offered no more explanation beyond that, and we went to the concert anyway. I was distracted, so the music did not have the transporting effect I had hoped it would have. Afterward, George found a room for me in the inn nearby.

  It was absolutely frigid. Still wearing my sealskin coat, I tossed between numbing sheets, hearing the ping of ice crystals pelting the window. I wrenched from the night a restless sleep amid a phantasmagoria of images barely discernible in fog and clouds of turquoise steam—Mr. Tiffany walking me down the aisle following my bridesmaid, a big, broad-shouldered blonde with swaying gait—no Mendelssohn—only the slow measures of an organ-grinder wearing an Irish ulster and cranking out “East Side, West Side, all around the town,” and his monkey handing out pennies to woebegone immigrants in the pews, and Francis in ghostly gray handing a fistful of hundred-dollar bills to a nun. Waiting at the altar—black hair, narrow hips, with a scarlet handkerchief in his breast pocket—George.

  I jerked awake in a sweat, shaken and ashamed.

  THE STORM HAD PASSED, but in the morning on the train back to Manhattan, I was still distressed. Beside the shock of the wrong brother at the altar, the eerie appearance of Francis rewarding the daughter of his successful lover sent a chill I could not ignore.

  It was an overcast day, which would limit any success in glass selection. I set some girls on tasks that did not require natural light, and took the ferry and train to the Corona glasshouse, ostensibly to consult with Mr. Nash about glass I would need for upcoming commissions.

  In the dim cavernous factory, shafts of fiery light and whooshing sound poured out of the mouths of furnaces. Partially clad men moved in a ritual choreography, swinging red-hot pokers. It was an elemental netherworld charged with maleness—potent, half repulsive, half alluring.

  I went right to Tom Manderson’s shop. His chest gleamed with a patina of sweat. The gatherer handed off the blowpipe to him, and some dollops fell to the floor from the incandescent gob. The blower blew on the mouthpiece of the pipe to create a bulb, and Tom shaped it with a paddle. This much I’d seen before, but now I saw something new.

  Before the gob was fully blown and shaped, a second gatherer brought Tom a ladle of glass from the smaller glory hole, which I presumed was a contrasting color, perhaps in an iridescent formula. With a long metal pincer, Tom directed a trickle of the second glass onto his gob, rotated it by quarter turns, and applied more dabs. I stepped closer and saw him connect those dabs with a thread of dripped glass laid on in arabesques. In that adroit action he planted the seed of the decoration he had in mind.

  As the blower gave it more air, the decoration Tom applied when the ball was only an egg spread broadly over the enlarged belly, and Tom caressed it with an asbestos pad. Each time it hardened and cooled, Tom sent it back to be thrust into the glory hole. It was almost too much to take in all at once—the beauty of molten glass on the blowpipe, its slipperiness, its translucence, its expansion, the repeated thrusts into the fiery hole, the mounting rhythm, the speed, Tom’s glistening skin, the curly black hair on his chest, the expressiveness of his well-formed muscles working in his arms and chest. Without warning, Tom swung the pipe and vase toward me so I could take a look, and a tremor overtook me.

  He handed it off to an assistant, raised his shoulders and pulled them back in a big stretch. He picked up a dollop of glass that had fallen to the floor and stepped out of the workshop area to give it to me. Curling my hand into a fist, I hesitated to receive what I thought would burn me.

  “Trust me.”

  I gasped as he touched the dollop of glass to his lips. Now I took it willingly. It was still warm but not too hot to handle. I kept it in my palm all the way back on the train, exultant at the arousal I’d felt.

  And what of Edwin? Would his muscles excite me like Tom’s did? Did his black hair grow on his chest too? Would he enjoy having it stroked? Would there be any preamble in bed, or would he be direct and urgent? Rough or gentle? I couldn’t imagine him to be oafish. Would there be a sound at his highest moment? A grimace? Any expression of euphoria? Would it be so consuming, so alive, that love of mere inert glass would fade in comparison to what we had done?

  What if it wasn’t consuming? What if my touch meant nothing, generated nothing in him? What if I would be repeating the painful nights I’d had with Francis? Cold fear froze my nerves. What if Francis had been right, that his inability had been my fault? I couldn’t go through that humiliation again. Surely there would be more excitement than I had with Francis, whose gray chest hair was patchy and whose belly hung over his belt. I had to be rational about this. Before the marriage, while there was still time to back out if I needed to, regardless of my mother’s etiquette handbook and my stepfather’s preaching, I had to prove to myself that I wasn’t the failure, and that Edwin wouldn’t be either.

  THE NEXT TIME I saw him we were going to see a short French film of Loïe Fuller performing her Serpentine Dance, swinging yards and yards of silk in a frenzy of moving shapes. I was quite excited because she had not only become a modern dance sensation but the living symbol of Art Nouveau as well.

  Walking with Edwin to Madison Square Garden I was still miffed about being left in Nutley, and I let him know it.

  “I was going to be sick. I didn’t want you to see me that way,” he said.

  “A little explanation would have gone a long way.”

  “I had to get out fast. I knew George would take care of you.”

  “That didn’t stop us from worrying about you walking out in the dark with drifts above your ankles. It was inconsiderate.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He took my hand and kissed it as we walked, then cleared his throat and said, “I have something to tell you. In a few months I have to leave you for a while. The University Settlement in Chicago has asked me to give the keynote address at its annual fund-raiser in August.” He paused long enough for me to see my opportunity. “And I have accepted.”

  I stopped abruptly on the sidewalk. I could surprise him just as well as he had surprised me. With no hesitation to receive what might burn me, I said, “Let me go with you. A prenuptial honeymoon. I’ll quit
Tiffany Studios.”

  CHAPTER 13

  LAKE GENEVA

  “YOU WERE STUPENDOUS, EDWIN. YOU HAD THE AUDIENCE RIVETED to your words.”

  My admiration had swelled overnight, and when we left Chicago on the train the morning after his big speech, we both felt exuberant because of his success there, and at least for me, because of the anticipation of making love that night. We were headed north on the Great Northern along Lake Michigan, with no one else in our compartment, and would take a spur line to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, which had been a favorite place for him since boyhood.

  “Have you ever had a standing ovation before?”

  He opened the window of the train and held his face to the breeze before he said yes. A modest yes, whisked away on the wind. He ducked back inside.

  I winked. “Maybe you’ll have another one tonight.”

  “I think the audience understood that we need to acknowledge the interdependence between the classes in order to transform settlement houses from charities to a self-propelled force for socialist policy and labor reform.”

  Dear preoccupied Edwin, so earnest that he missed my little joke.

  “After I build up some seed money in Mexico, and after another year working in the Lower East Side, I’ll be ready to run for State Assembly.”

  “I’d like to work on your lower east side. Do you think we would both feel tingly? We might both find cause for applause.”

  His head jerked from the window to me. “Clara! I never knew you could be so … saucy.”

  I gave him a teasing look. “Adventures and surprises.”

  …

  A ONE-HORSE SHAY took us from the depot at Lake Geneva to Kaye’s Park Hotel and Cottages on the south shore. Lovely maples, oaks, and lindens reminded me of my Ohio home. Small excursion steamers and rowboats plied the water, and a windmill at water’s edge turned slowly. A row of lounge chairs facing the water, an octagonal pagoda on the lawn, wooden steps down to the water, and a rustic dock made the place charming.

  “The ideal Midwestern honeymoon spot,” I said. “Innocent and unadulterated. Until now.”

  “Shall I tell the proprietor we’re on our honeymoon?”

  “No. Don’t say that. He’ll tell the chef, and the chef will prepare a special breakfast and come out to ask us how it was, and he’ll wink at you and he won’t mean the breakfast. There’s something cruel about that, guessing how the performance was. It’s all too Old World, like those villages where the bride’s mother had to hang the bloody sheet out the window to prove that her daughter had been a virgin. Just tell him we’re married.”

  “Delighted to, darling.”

  We were greeted by the proprietor, Arthur Kaye, whom Edwin knew.

  “A cottage or two hotel rooms?” Mr. Kaye asked.

  “One room. This is Mrs. Clara Waldo.”

  It gave me a start, the name spoken.

  “Congratulations, then.”

  “Thank you,” Edwin said.

  In our room on the third floor, I busied myself hanging up my dresses until Edwin began to take off his coat and vest. I stopped and watched his every move. There he stood in his shirtsleeves—the modern style, soft cotton with only the cuffs and collar starched for the world to see. I was seeing what the world didn’t—his broad shoulders filling out the shirt, the shape of his arm muscles beneath the cloth, the fringe of hair at his cuffs. We’d had separate rooms in Chicago, so I felt a little jittery now, but I didn’t want to be on edge. I wanted to be just like the lake, calm as glass, and step into intimacy unencumbered and enjoy with abandon. After all, I’d given up a lot for this.

  Edwin opened the window to a jubilant chorus of birds in a tall butternut tree and I caught a glimpse of an iridescent green dragonfly.

  “Look at the geese,” he said, diverting my gaze.

  Dozens of wild geese dotted the lawns sloping down to the lake. They had brown wings and creamy breasts, and their long, graceful necks were jet-black. A dramatic flash of white shone under their beaks and on their cheeks.

  “They’re beautiful, don’t you think?” I asked.

  Edwin came close behind me, reached his arms around me, and placed a single soft kiss on my neck. “If your taste prefers feathers to skin.”

  “They travel thousands of miles, don’t they?”

  “They mate for life.”

  “Truly? They all look alike, so how can they be sure, out of so many, that they’ve chosen the right one?”

  “Instinct.” The warm breath of that word fell on my ear.

  “OUR OWN SNUG HARBOR,” Edwin said as he unlocked the door to our room after dinner and a lakeshore stroll. “Our first home,” he said softly. “Welcome to our first adventure, Mrs. Waldo.”

  “I’m not Mrs. Waldo yet, Mr. Waldo. I’m only acting the role in this stage set.”

  We were talkative for a while, until he turned down the gas lamp. Moonlight gentled itself across the floor and over the bed, and a momentous quiet overtook us. In my mind I heard Tristan and Isolde’s sweeping duet, “Oh, sink upon us, Night of Love.”

  Silhouetted by the pale luminescence behind him, Edwin’s shirt glowed blue-white in the moonlight. He pulled it out of his trousers, and the soft whooshing sound gave me a thrill.

  I started to unbutton my shirtwaist, and his hand drew mine away. “My pleasure,” he whispered, and took up where I’d left off, exploring between each button with warm, sure hands, each exquisite stroke a sweet adventure, as he had promised. He laid me down, and the muscles of my back and arms tightened instantly at my own deliberate licentiousness. I was soon soothed by kisses, mere touches, silent, slow, artfully placed, here, there, there too—quickening, rushing one upon another—abandoning methodical tenderness for jubilant haste—answering urge with urge—his thrust to my push—mine to his—his importunate, important—quaking together joyfully—settling, moment by long moment, into a delicate swoon of slow breathing and peace and rest.

  We had not failed each other.

  CHAPTER 14

  WILD GEESE

  A JOSTLING OF THE BED AWAKENED ME, BUT I DIDN’T TURN TO him, giving him privacy, since soft daylight had entered the room. I heard him thrust one leg, then the other, into his trousers. The key clicked in the lock. Instantly, I rose on my elbow.

  “Edwin?”

  “I’ll be right back. I’m going to get you something. A surprise.”

  The place where he had lain was still warm. I moved into it to enjoy the memory—from his kisses, each one a benediction, to his exploratory touch of my thigh, to his startled, wide-eyed look at the moment of effusion. My wild Edwin. Passion and Risk had smiled on me, and I could throw off my worries.

  In his plaintive sigh that had signaled his coming back to earth, I sensed that he had been vulnerable to a moment too strong for him. The shadows cast by moonlight had made his face appear troubled. Even so, my happiness had merged into peaceful sleep.

  I closed my eyes now to make it night again, and there stretched before me a millennium of Nights of Love. Soon he would give me the surprise, whatever it was, perhaps a breakfast pastry from the dining room, and I would give him this vision of night after night of loving through eternity, like two mirrors facing each other, reflecting smaller and smaller images until they became two pinpoints of color.

  The piercingly sharp, two-note song of a wren repeated itself relentlessly, as if saying, “Get up! Get up!” I obeyed it, bathed, dressed, and put up my hair.

  Perhaps I had misunderstood. Perhaps I was to meet him in the dining hall for breakfast. I was suddenly overtaken with a ravishing hunger. I crept downstairs feeling like a fugitive. He was not in the parlor reading the Chicago paper, which would have been natural since it probably contained an account of the Settlement House event. He was not in the dining room. He was not on the porch or in a lounge chair on the lawn or in the pagoda. I felt I shouldn’t venture far, so I returned to the dining room for breakfast. The waiter who had served us the night before gave me a quizzic
al look at the doorway.

  “One, please,” I said. “May I sit by a window?”

  I ate looking out and hurried back to the room, thinking that he had returned and was distressed to find me gone. The room was just as I had left it. I went down to the front desk, and Mr. Kaye greeted me as Mrs. Waldo.

  “Have you seen Edwin this morning?”

  He thought a moment. “No. Can’t say that I have. He probably went to the general store for a newspaper. It’s not far.”

  “If you happen to see him, tell him I went for a walk.” I pointed in one direction on the lakeshore path.

  “I certainly will, Mrs. Waldo.”

  Outside, I stepped onto the dock and peered down into the water, ashamed of my gruesome thought. There were only grasses on the sandy bottom. I looked over the other side of the dock, was relieved to see nothing, and headed in the direction I had pointed, making an effort to acknowledge appropriately the promenading guests. I walked the length of Kaye’s Park and several mansions beyond, looking between them into the woods, and into the water alongside the pathway. I did the same in the other direction. All I found was an abandoned bird’s nest fallen from a tree, once entwined by instinct, now a disheveled bed after a hasty flight, sticks and leaves awry.

  Mr. Kaye was working on board his boat when I returned. “Would there be any reason he would go into the woods?” I asked from the dock.

  “Only to gather wood violets for you.”

  “Are there bears?”

  “Not often.”

  “Wolves?”

  “Yes.” He raised up from his work and looked at me. “Go inside and have a nice lunch. I’ll look in the stables and outbuildings, and then you and I will go out in the small launch to have a look.”

  We spent the afternoon navigating the lake, asking everyone, looking in covered boathouses and boatyards, checking at other hotels. We came back without a shred of information.